Hestia

Blurb

Hestia is a 1979 science fiction novel by science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh. It is an early Cherryh novel about colonists on an alien world and their interactions with the catlike natives, centering on a young engineer sent to solve the colonists' problems, and his relationship with the young native cat-woman in scanty clothing on the cover.
Major themes in this novel include sexual liberation, sexual aberration, relevance of social mores, hypocrisy of social mores, personal work ethic, personal responsibility, ecological responsibility, blame-shifting, bureaucratic inertia, administrative reflex reactions, the mindset of the engineering profession, and responsibility toward indigenous peoples. Many other characters and the world itself are not developed with as much depth as those in some of Cherryh's other early works, such as Gate of Ivrel, The Pride of Chanur, Merchanter's Luck, and The Dreamstone. Notably, the alien cat-people in this novel are entirely different from the hani of the Chanur novels, being in temperament and culture somewhat more like housecats than lions.